Next Monday the Austin City Council will vote on the City budget – including proposed water rate hikes to pay for the $1.2 billion Water Treatment Plant No. 4
Speak up today and through the weekend or pay every month for decades into the future for this boondoggle project. Email the entire council at savewatersavemoney.org and call Council Member Sheryl Cole at 974-2266 and/or Council Member Mike Martinez at 974-2264 and tell them to vote “NO” on the water rate hikes.
Your voice will join that of Save Our Springs, Public Citizen, Gray Panthers, Austin NAACP, PODER, Austin Social Action Coalition, Liveable City, Clean Water Action, and many others opposing the water rate hikes.
This year’s proposed rate hike is 7 percent, on top of a 60 percent increase from the previous 7 years, and 25 to 50 percent increases required in 2012 through 2015, mostly to pay for a plant we don’t need and which will destroy endangered species habitat. If plant construction is funded this year, the subsequent rate hikes will be necessary to pay for it.
Water sales were down 20 percent this year, leaving a $50 million hole in the Water Utility budget. Rather than save ratepayer dollars by postponing the plant, the City proposed to rush forward with the plant while cutting the budget for replacing old, failing pipes that lose billions of gallons of water every year.
Tell City Hall to restore priorities and sanity to spending: reduce rates, fix our broken pipes, postpone the plant in 2025 or later, when we actually might need it.